Thursday, February 29,3903

thing as twenty years ago or thirty years ago at all. You have to understand that the union people, the labour people, they have to ask for more money because the money is not . . . . I can remember when the family used to be able to buy groceries for about $2.00 a week, and now $50.00 a week hardly goes around. That’s the difference. So that is something that should be taken into consideration.

Hon. Alexander R. Campbell; Well if you are complaining perhaps we will trade jobs because you are making five times as much as I am. (Laughter)

L. George Dewar: Well we won’t set any figures down. (Laughter) Oh Mr. Sharpe will be after you too. (Laughter)

Hon. Robert E. Campbell: He has already been after me.

L. George Dewar: He will take his share, a good big one too. Of course we will have to thank the Conservatives and the NDP for saving your skin a little this year. Whether they will continue to do that I don’t know. They held the line for the time being but I see by the papers today that they are going to con- trive some other way of squeezing John Q. Public again and extracting their pound of flesh.

Yell to leave agriculture and the monetary situation alone for a while I would like to say a few words with respect to education.

I was pleased to listen to the Minister of Education this afternoon. He was rather brief; I thought perhaps he would have given us a more comprehensive survey of his activities in his department for the year.

He mentioned a number of items, but I think he left out the most important one altogether. I don’t think he treated it; if he did it must have been very briefly. I was waiting for him to describe the Number One problem in education in this Province today, the problem of elementary schools. This is the greatest problem, this is one that will have to be tackled right away. There has been some progress made but I am afraid he will have to give the former administration most of the credit for whatever has been done in this respect to date. :He mentioned in the Speech from the Throne that he has instituted a study on an overall development plan for educational facilities, instruction and administration. Now I was hoping that that was one point, I felt that that was the important item in the Speech from the Throne and I expected that he would elaborate a considerable extent on that particular item.

Hon. Gordon L. Bennett: Only the first installment.

L. George Dewar: .He certainly glossed over it very briefly, if mentioned at all, and we will be looking forward to a complete exposition of this plan because I think this is a very important thing, it is one that should be instituted right away and one that is very necessary.

One thing that I am concerned about is that we are going to have very little action for sometime. Not only in this educational program but I should mention agriculture and industry and other items. We are going to be waiting for this development plan, and the Lord only knows when that will be agreed to, or finalized, because I don’t know how long the worthy gentlemen composing it are going to take to get it finalized. Then it has to go through many channels in the Federal arena of government, and how long it will take them up there to agree to it. It may be sent back time after time, and it may be years before we get the action on this overall Comprehensive Development Plan. I am not criticising it at all, I was always — it was the former administration of course who instituted the idea, it was the former administration who did the spade work in having the Acres people bring forward the surveys to form the basis upon which this plan could be developed.

Some Member: They are not using that.

L. George Dewar: Well, of course I think they must be using it to some extent. I know there probably is a lot of information there that is not very valu-

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